Denver County Clerk and Recorder Debra Johnson ripped Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler on Wednesday, saying he is “trying for an end run around the court” with a proposed rule governing when clerks may mail ballots to inactive voters.

But Johnson later backed away from more serious charges of “voter suppression.”

“This rule, if enacted, oversteps the Secretary’s authority to interpret existing laws and may create new barriers for voters instead of eliminating them,” Johnson said in a statement sent out by her office and posted online. “It’s voter suppression, plain and simple.”

But after Gessler’s office defended the new rule, Johnson’s office altered its online statement to remove the quote about voter suppression.

The secretary of state’s office said the rule proposed late last week clarifies that clerks may not mail ballots to inactive voters in a “coordinated” mail-ballot election, or a mail-ballot election held simultaneously with another political entity. It also states that inactive voters may not receive a mail ballot for any other election, with the exception of a primary, unless the voter submits an application for a mail ballot.

Rich Coolidge, communications director for Gessler’s office, said the secretary is “trying to preserve statewide uniformity of elections” because, otherwise, clerks could treat inactive voters differently from county to county.

something that is particularly important in a presidential election year.

Gessler has argued in the past that Colorado law clearly states that only active voters should get a mail ballot, except in a primary election, when all voters affiliated with a political party receive one. He also says following such a policy is not voter suppression because inactive voters may still cast ballots at their polling place.

Inactive voters are those who skip a general election and any subsequent election and don’t respond to postcards mailed to their home. In Colorado, they are overwhelmingly Democrats and unaffiliated, and many are voters who registered in 2008, when then-Sen. Barack Obama conducted one of the largest voter-registration feats in history.

The issue of when those voters may get ballots already has been raging in both the courts and the General Assembly.

Early Wednesday, it appeared Denver may be considering mailing ballots to inactive voters in November.

Asked whether Denver may do so, Alton Dillard, spokesman for the clerk’s office, said elections officials were waiting to learn for certain what will be on the ballot — a decision that won’t come until later this summer — before deciding how they will handle mail ballots.

Later in the day, however, Dillard said the office would not mail to inactive voters this fall.

Last year, Gessler sued Johnson to try to stop her from mailing to inactive voters for the November coordinated election. A judge denied Gessler’s motion for an injunction, in part because by the time the case was heard some ballots already had been mailed and returned, and granting the injunction would have invalidated those votes. The case itself is still pending and isn’t scheduled for a hearing until January.

The owners of Boulder’s Sterling University Peaks apartments, who this summer were cited for illegally subdividing 92 bedrooms in the complex, have reached an agreement to settle the case for $410,000, the city announced Thursday.